I’m a huge fan of games inspired by anime, both in terms of plot and appearance. And that’s exactly why I’m somehow attracted to the so-called up to games. Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Zenless Zone Zero, Honkai: Star Rail and the like – I’ve tried them all, but rarely have they stuck with me for more than a few weeks. Primarily because they are up to mechanics tied to progression and so oppressive that they go against everything I think makes a game fun.
Well, that’s exactly why I welcomed DragonSword: Awakening with increased interest. It is a game that, due to disagreements between the development studio and the publisher, gave up the free-to-play model in the middle of development, threw out up to elements and comes out as a full-blooded anime RPG experience. The question then is only one: did it turn out to be a strange and crippling experience or proof that it would up to the games were immeasurably better if they weren’t up to?
| Initial price | Reviewed version | Reviewer copy |
| 30€ | PC | Provided by publisher |
GOOD ANIME CLICHE
DragonSword’s story isn’t spectacular, but it has more charm than you might expect. Everything takes place in the fantastic kingdom of Orbis, where the protagonist Lute arrives after a shipwreck. He soon meets a charming handful of mercenaries with whom he embarks on various adventures, all with the goal of making their group the best the world has ever seen. In classic anime fashion, things start out bright and carefree, but quickly escalate when the world is threatened by the return of ancient, immensely powerful dragons – and what started out as a story about a group of mercenaries turns into saving the entire world.
The story is inspired by all possible anime clichés, which is perfectly fine because that’s what the audience is looking for. However, I would not say that there is no substance there, even for those who do not know anime. The main protagonist, for a change, is not a silent nod but talks and reacts to the world around him, and the supporting cast is very charming. Especially Johnny, whose character arc from prankster to thoughtful and mature leader is well worth seeing.
The story of DragonSword is nothing spectacular, but it has more charm than you might expect.
Of course, there are also empty, one-dimensional characters who exist only to look cool or to feed you some information. But that’s less due to bad writing, and more to the fact that there are just too many of them: in a game with about twenty characters, there’s simply no room for everyone to get their time in the spotlight. And this is the first aspect where it is clearly noticed what the game was originally supposed to be.
The second is the pace of the game. Although you can finish the main story in about 20 hours, it often happens that you do an interesting mission that culminates in a larger-than-life threat, only to move boxes or do some equally trivial things in a series of subsequent ones while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It can be a problem of almost every RPG in the open world, but here it comes to the fore especially when you take into account all the other systems on which it is felt up to origin.
The directed films are excellently realized and look like full-blooded anime.
Still, it’s a pleasure to watch all of it because it’s very effective in terms of presentation. The game runs smoothly, the directed films are especially well realized and I wouldn’t object at all if someone served me a few seasons of real anime with this graphic style. Apart from them, there are also somewhat more static dialogues between the characters, which are again supported by surprisingly solid voice acting and charming characters. It’s worth noting here that the acting is currently only available in Korean, but the performances are expressive enough that I didn’t mind the subtitles.
MORE CHARACTERS = MORE FUN?
The Kingdom of Orbis is an open world that will be structurally familiar to you, and the inspiration from Genshin Impact is obvious from the first minute. Magnificent meadows, beaches, seas, forests, mountains and fantastic architecture, with camps of goblins and other beasts scattered all around. It looks quite nice, to the point that the opening scene where you go from the directed movie to the gameplay is a bit unreal. Admittedly, no matter how beautiful and saturated with colors the world is, at times it suffers from a somewhat sterile design. Everything is somehow too neat, clean and tame, as if it lacks something to be more convincing at times.
Unlike many similar games, moving around the world in DragonSword is immediately more interesting because you have access to the so-called familiarimaadorable creatures with which you can run, climb rocks and float. Along with them, the world is generously scattered with windmills from which you can launch yourself across half the map, as well as fast travel points that you have to unlock by solving a small spatial puzzle. There are also secret paths, hidden chests with resources, etc., which makes it somewhat worthwhile to explore everything outside of the paths that the main missions send you to.
Igra’s world is visually beautiful, but at times somewhat sterile.
Whether you went into side paths or fought your way through missions – combat is, without any doubt, the main activity that greatly carries the game. You basically have a three-member team of characters that you freely switch between, and each character inflicts some kind of status effect like electricity, fire, ice, and the like. Different opponents are weak or resistant to different effects, and at the same time each of them has a shield, breaking it leaves you open to more devastating attacks.
There is no blocking and parrying, so accurate dodging is the only way to avoid attacks, and a lot of emphasis is placed on combining the right characters and actively switching them within the fight. By fulfilling certain conditions, the portrait of a character you are not using will give you a signal to switch to him and when you do, he will perform a large attack with an effective animation. Character switching is so smooth that you can fire off an attack with a longer animation, switch to another character, and the first one will complete their attack. The animations are sharp, the impact feedback is excellent and the whole thing just feels good in the hand.
Combat is mechanically simple, but deep enough to be interesting.
The characters and their variety are also what keep the DragonSword loop fresh. Although relatively simple mechanically, each character has different animations and attack range, specific skills, status effects, game rhythm and role in the team. I would say, even more than in some famous ones up to games, to the point that unlocking the next character was the main motivator for me to push through the more boring parts of the story.
However, not everything is ideal. Aiming is clumsy, the camera can go wild in crowds, and hit detection occasionally fails. A bigger problem than that is that the difficulty becomes practically trivial once you get a good team together. The loop in which you break the enemy’s armor and leave him vulnerable by combining statuses is so effective that even fighting some bosses becomes a formality.
GACHA BEZ GAĆA
If until now it was only hinted at where this game came from, then the progression is an explicit confirmation. There are so many systems that it is difficult to list them all in one breath: character levels, equipment levels, skills, karma cards, a mercenary group level that limits the level of characters, equipment with randomly assigned statistics from dungeons, and in addition to all that, a bunch of different resources and currencies, each of which is used for exactly one thing. One look at the main menu and someone who has played one up to game everything will be clear.
Character unlocks are perhaps the most obvious. You get some of them by going through the story, but the vast majority are unlocked with cards that you earn by completing certain tasks, and they have a weak or almost no presence in the story. The consequence is a bit bizarre: it is quite possible that your team of three does not include any member of the mercenary group you see in the movies. That team still carries the action, comments on the events and pushes the story forward, while you play it with three people you first saw through some menu. The gap between what the story shows and what you actually play is very present there.
Even though the worst elements have been removed, the gacha legacy is still evident as soon as you enter a menu.
Nevertheless, even such a progression here is much more digestible than in the games from which it was borrowed, and for one simple reason: it is not up to. There is none bannerthere is no draw, no energy that tells you after half an hour to come back tomorrow. You earn all characters, resources and equipment just by playing, replaying dungeons and completing chapters. Grind and repetitiveness are definitely felt over time, but no one tempts you to use real money or pressure hangs over your head to go in every day and click something so you don’t miss something.
It’s a difference that changes the whole experience. The same systems that in up to games are meant to wear you down and eventually break you, here they are just what they are – a progression system that you do at your own pace. When you feel like it, farms. When you don’t feel like it – don’t farm. No one keeps records.
For those who make it to the end of the campaign in DragonSword, there will be a solid amount of content waiting for them. There are replays of boss fights with increased difficulty and better rewards, multi-stage raids, hunting for world bossvarious challenges and puzzles that can potentially add another +30 hours to the overall experience.
THE DICE HAS FALLEN
DragonSword: Awakening answered the question I approached it with. Removal waste didn’t make this game a crippled experience. On the contrary, it showed that these systems in themselves are not particularly problematic. As soon as the part that eats up your time, nerves and money is removed from them, what remains is a perfectly decent game that you can devote yourself to at your own pace.
The catch is that this same origin also explains most of what’s wrong with the game. The pace of the story, the characters that are too many for the game to give enough attention to, the occasional gap between the story and the gameplay – none of this is accidental. These are the scars of a game that was meant to last for years and get content in seasons, rather than being one well-rounded experience.
And there is my main thought. DragonSword is a fun experience and I have no hesitation in recommending it, especially for around thirty euros. But more than anything, this is confirmation that it would have been an immeasurably better and probably more successful game if it had been done this way from day one – with this story, these characters and this combat, but as a full-blooded RPG, not as something that ended up as such a product by the way.